There is a vast market for medications aimed at a variety of physical afflictions affecting both animals and humans. Numerous medications are also on the market for a variety of plant diseases common to various kinds of trees, vegetables and the like. As a result, pharmaceutical industries have gown extensively over the past several decades, especially with the ever widening understanding of the human genome and the relationship of specific genes and their relation to a variety of illnesses. Many medications have become available for cures for both plant and animal diseases and illnesses, previously hard or impossible to treat effectively. In most cases the medications are carefully manufactured by leading pharmaceutical firms. However, there exists the danger of medications that are manufactured by rogue companies that are either incorrectly formulated or have falsified contents incorporated in the pills or capsules which are then purchased by consumers or dispensed at treating facilities such as hospitals, clinics and the like.
It is therefore of some interest as well as concern to find means for preventing counterfeiting of medications using methods that are not readily detectable by obvious methods such as visual examination of the exterior of the pill or capsule. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,548,825 to Voss et al. which teaches a method of inkjet printing onto a pill or capsule. Identifying marks on the surface of such medications are too easily copied and counterfeited thereby allowing rogue manufacturers to utilize these symbols or marker present on the well known brand names on a counterfeited version of a particular medication.
The possibility of counterfeiting medications has increased in recent years as more domestic and foreign suppliers reach into the pharmaceutical supply chain thereby increasing the chances of making look-alikes. The ability to obtain drugs which are advertised as being authentic from the internet adds yet another source of possible counterfeit drugs in the form of pills and capsules that unsuspecting customers may have been induced to purchase. While some of the look-alikes may be equally as effective for the designated treatment as the originals, many will not be. Since there is the possibility that some counterfeit or look-alike pharmaceuticals may be ineffective, or worse yet, harmful or fatal to the plant or animal, it becomes prudent and even essential to have some internal hidden marker within the pharmaceutical from which authenticity of the individual pill or capsule can be ascertained. At the same time, this marker must be totally harmless to the plant or animal for which the use is intended.